The days and nights of an overworked, overfed, underpaid, underslept mom who adores her kids even when they suck.

Friday, September 5, 2008

Nanny v. Britney

How I long for the good old days of my childhood when one had to go looking for porn. Sure, when you were babysitting and flipping thru channels maybe you came across a racy show on Z-Channel, but it's not the same as today when one wrong click of the mouse can pull up images that would make Hugh Heffner blush.

This first happened to me several years ago when we were going apple picking. I couldn't remember how to get there and thought I'd Google the farm, Honey Pot Hill. You can just imagine the smut that flooded my screen. Dave had the same problem when Jonah went thru a superhero phase and wanted to find some "X-Men" games. Don't search for "X" and "Men" together. Bad bad stuff my friends. So to help weed out the smut, Dave installed some Larry Flint recommended software called "Safe Eyes." And it worked pretty well. So well that I became complacent.

Last week, right after I went to Girl's Camp, I decided I needed to share a funny story on a friend's blog. I'd had a conversation with two women from Revere who were talking about their oldest girls heading off to college. "Things sure have changed," said one. "Yeah," replied the other, "when we were that age only the easy, slutty girls went to college." I am still smiling about that one. Anyhow, I write the post and go to add a picture, imagining a shot of Britney Spears in her skimpy school girl attire. So I, being the overly confident idiot that I am, Google the words "slutty college girls" and hit return. OH. MY. GOSH. I burned my corneas as image after graphic image popped up. And because I was simultaneously burning pictures onto a disk, when I tried to close out the page it took forever as I'm sitting there with my hands over my eyes like the monkey desperate to see no evil.

When Dave returned from his business trip, I told him what had happened and we shuttered at what could happen with the wrong stroke of the keys. He spent the evening loading new software onto the computers. [Side note: as he is doing this and I am doing dishes, the A/C in the attic breaks and water floods it, seeping into the floor and then to Jonah's room. Jonah goes in there to find it literally raining. I'd been in there an hour earlier, before the water had started to drip, noticed a foul smell and berated Jonah for being a stinky 11 year old who needed to find whatever awful thing he'd left in his room to rot. In my defense, this is the boy who will leave a soaking towl in a duffel for weeks or put a ham sandwich in a drawer.]

But the new software is a little paranoid. Two nights ago I was window shopping on line and the Net Nanny refuses to let me go to a shoe website because it contains "intimate apparel." I try all our regular passwords to override it but none work. I give up and go to check my email and find I have 226 messages in my Spam. Obviously I hate Spam becuase it's useless junk, but I mostly hate it because it is the easiest way for slutty college girls to get in my computer. But when I go to trash them all, the Nanny pops up and accuses me of trying to access inappropriate material and refuses to let me by so that I can dump that crap. How dare she! But then I calm down. Nanny is just doing her job. She is trying to keep me and my family safe from nude co-eds.

The next morning Dave gives me the password ("Oh THAT password. Duh!") and I have a little chat with Nanny about allowing me to expurgate my Spam. [Meanwhile, our fridge dies. I discover this when I crab at Millie about not finishing her milk and she tells me that it tastes funny. I smell it. Ew. I open the fridge and it's 54 degrees in there, the same temperature as certain people's houses--you know who you are Lindy!]

Tonite I decide to check out Landsend and see if I can get a long sleeved rash guard on clearance for Georgia who always gets burned the first hot week of the year (And I admite I have a swimsuit addiction, for me and my kids. That's another story). Guess what Nanny did? She REFUSED to let me get onto Landsend. LANDSEND for heaven sake, not Victoria Secret. Fine fine. I enter the password, but is that good enough for Nanny? Noooooo. She has to shove her "access denied, request override" message in my face everytime I try to look at a long sleeved rashguard, which is basically a swimsuit for Hutterites and the Taliban. Every time the white box pops up I can see her dour face and haughty stare, accusing me to lasciviousness. "Don't you judge me you Damn Nanny!" I shout at the screen.

I'm calm now. But I am torn. I do not want anyone in our house to access sleaze on the internet, intentionally or otherwise. But I cannot support Nanny's behavior. I need to be able to shop with impunity. I shop therefore I am. So if anyone can recommend an anti-porn software that's slightly more enlightened than Church Lady, let me know.

P.S. After writing this post I tried to access my blog to proofread it and guess what Nanny did? Yep, tried to deny me access to my very own blog. That's crossing a line and I'm, well, I'm just so hurt.

I hear you sister! My scary Honey-Pot-Hill moment came when I was looking for yarn. YARN! But I promise you, the woman who popped up wasn't wearing a stitch. Your post was also timely because just today your dear cousin informs me that our alma mater blocks Obama's website, but not McCains. Coincidence? I think not!

Thanks for the blog love Heather. You are a funny gal - I need to read you regularly :) Can't wait for the next Exponent post.

Um, we have "Optnet" which seems to work just fine? It occasionally labels random things as "naughty" that are just fine (ex: a friend's family blog, where they post pics of their kids) but not to the extent your computer nanny!

La Familia Hobo

About Me

I stay home full time with my 4 kids but I am not a full-time mom. That would mean that being a mom was my job, my life, my raison d’etre. And it isn’t. Not that I have really exciting important stuff going on. But I like to keep my options open. So my job is to train my kids to do their own thing. I refuse to ever play Barbies or video games with them, because if I did it once, they’d expect it of me every day. And if I played with them all day, when would I chat with my friends? When would I mess with photoshop? When would I read TV Guide?